Everybody has heard the stories of a few domains selling for over $1 million and some people getting in trouble for using the domain names of celebrities. For a recent example, there were several Janet Jackson domains registered a minute after her breast was exposed at the Super Bowl. Thus, a fair number of people outside of the industry feel that domains are either sleazy and a playground for cyber squatters or can make you rich overnight. As a domain dealer for over a year, I have learned that neither of these perceptions are true. Yes, there are still cyber squatters and domains that sell for extremely large sums, but these are the exceptions not the rule.

If you want to start out in the domain industry, be prepared to make several mistakes when you first start. Very rarely if ever will you be able to register a domain for $8 to $35 and then sell it for $1000 or more the next day. Instead, you will more than likely register domains that nobody else really wants. I don’t know how many times I have seen people ask for appraisals of their domains on forums and be personally offended when a price like $25 is quoted. Some people have taken their anger so far as to blast the forums themselves at Alexa.com! These are the type of people who don’t “get” the domain industry and will usually not last. Did I get my feelings hurt by appraisals when I first started? You bet I did. However, it made me want to find better names that much more until I finally did.

The first thing that you need to do is learn more about the domain industry in general, minus the myths. Go to a major forum and just absorb as much info as you can BEFORE you buy your first name. Trust me, it will save you a lot of time and money. After that, develop a strategy and stick to it for a while.

Ask yourself questions like: Do I want to only go after expiring names? Do I only want to buy domains with traffic? Do I only want to register new domains? Do I only want to buy domains from other people on forums?

To help you answer yourself, here are a few things to remember about each strategy: Usually, expiring domains are the most valuable because they go straight from the hands of one owner to another the second the domain expires. Nobody has the chance to stumble across these domains and register them when they feel like it. Buying solely traffic names is also a sound strategy because you can just earn income from the domain without trying to find a buyer for it. Registering only new names, on the other hand, should really not be done by a newbie because that is a fast way to spend a lot of money and get nothing in return. You would be better off buying names you like from other people on forums at wholesale prices because you have a better chance of buying solid names. If one of these buying strategies is not working out, then try another one after a week or two.

While building your domain portfolio, put a few domains up to be appraised to help get your feet wet in accepting the opinions of others. Try to learn from any negative comments you receive. You will also more than likely get a few helpful tips. Use these tips as well to improve your buying skills. Eventually, you will start buying significantly better names.

Ask any person not involved in the domain name industry and has not spent much time on the Internet to list the various available domain extensions and very few will list anything besides .com. Now ask somebody who has spent time on the Internet to list all of the global extensions and see what they say. I bet a few people will still only list .com while most others won’t get past .org. For further proof of the pervasiveness of .com outside the domain name industry, just look at what happened when the famous “Internet Bubble” finally popped and the stock market crashed. What did you hear back then? Was the “Internet Bubble” also called the “.NET Bubble” or maybe the “.ORG Bubble”? No, this important period of the Internet was also referred to as the “.COM Bubble” (.BOMB in some places) countless times. Thus, anybody who listened to the news in that time period undoubtedly heard .com this and .com that. That’s not even mentioning the fact that a plethora of Internet companies like Amazon.com showed off their .com domains on various TV commercials.

A few years have passed since the height of Internet mania on Wall Street but the Internet continues to become more involved in our daily lives and .com still remains the undisputed champion of domain name extensions despite many more being introduced like .info, .biz, and .us. From a domainer’s point of view .com is king as well since the overwhelming majority of domain sales over $10,000 are .com domains. Although not as large a margin between other extensions in end-user sales, even premium sales between domainers are usually .coms. Furthermore, from a personal standpoint, my top five domain sales have all been .coms.

However, domain newbies and most seasoned domainers should not be completely reliant on .com. Why not? Without question, .coms should be a major portion of your domain portfolio but don’t forget that a great portion of .coms are actually stinkers. For example, I would take a non .com domain like Jokes.org over a .com like eWebJokes.com all day long. To get the .coms that truly deserve a premium you will have to do one of three things:

Spend big bucks.

Be the first to backorder a name at a non-auction drop catcher like SnapNames.com or GoDaddy.

Buy it off somebody who doesn’t know what they have or just need a quick return.

Trying to manually register a premium .com is like trying to win the lottery. You chances are in the millions to one because people like myself spend enormous amounts of time trying to find hidden gems. I have sold a few .coms in the $xxx range that were manual regs and a few that I have developed as sites, but none are what you would call premium names. On the other hand, my best manually registered domain sale was from a .info in the mid $xxx range. In fact, I have more manually registered sales in the $xxx area from non .coms than I do from .coms. Why? Simply put, the names were better on the left side of the dot.

Having said all that, a good strategy for domainers without deep pockets would be to research expiring domains for opportunities to pick up a premium .com via a non-auction drop catcher while constantly looking for quality available names beyond .com. For more info on the other extensions, stay tuned to DBKV.eu for more installments in this series.

Let’s say you that you have an idea for a great domain name. You go to either a registrar or a Whois site and you check to see if it’s available. Your hopes are somewhat crushed when you discover that the .com version of the name is taken. However, you notice that “the next best thing” is currently available, the .net. You think why not since you did want that name badly, so you go ahead and register it. Did you make a good move? If no other non .com extensions were taken when you registered this domain, then probably not.

How can buying the second most popular global extension be a bad move? Depending on what you plan to do with the domain, there are several reasons. For starters, .nets will probably always trail .coms (on the same names) in terms of type-ins because .com is the default extension in the major browsers and .com is just considerably more known than .nets. This severely hinders your ability to generate income from most .net domains. Secondly, .nets do not resale well. Not only does .net under-sale .org among resellers on the major domain forums but even lower extensions like .info and .us usually out-sale .net as well. Lastly, let’s say that you develop your .net and spend a lot of time and money building it up. Guess what’s going to happen? Yes, the .com version of your name is going to benefit some from all your work and money because some visitors while type in the .com to find your site again.

Of course, the exception to the guidelines mentioned above is the ultra-premium name. This great name can be in the form of a major keyword or a 2 to 3 letter domain. For example, a domain like Hosting.net or pic.net will still command very high premiums in the resale market. The previous guidelines mentioned are only for poor to above average domains.

These special cases aside, there are a few other reasons why you should largely avoid .net. Probably the most important of these is simply image. For instance, a domain sales site had better not use a .net because it will probably convey the message that the owner does not have quality names simply because the owner can not even get the best version of their own domain! Furthermore, unlike most other extensions that will be covered in this series, you have to take into consideration that .net has positioned itself as nothing but a .com wannabe. Do you see many domain names on TV using .net? No, but you see plenty of .coms and .orgs. Who wants to advertise a domain with a second rate extension? For more info on the extensions that do position themselves differently than .com, stay tuned to DBKV.eu for more installments in this series.

Although .com continues to dominate the domain landscape, .org has carved out itself a nice little niche. .Org has been able to establish this niche because it has a significantly better/cleaner image than .com due to its non-profit origins. These non-profit origins have translated into a great deal of TV time for this extension. I don’t know how many times that I have been watching TV and saw a commercial or program saying something.org. It has actually gotten to the point where I don’t know whether .org or .com gets more TV time these days.

What does that mean for domainers? It means that domainers have a viable substitute for .com in certain areas. These areas do not have to be completely void of making a profit, but some industries simply DO NOT work well .org at all. These non-.org industries include:

sex – remember that .org has a fairly clean image

hosting – stick with .com or .net

gambling – unless for addicts or along those lines

money-related – anything overtly related to commerce or money

Besides just non-profit organizations, a few areas that DO work with .org include:

free games

reviews

directories

news or blogs

general info about a particular subject

Now the question that you are probably asking yourself is how can you make money off .org if this extension is supposed to be non-profit. Like .com was originally intended just for commerce (where the ‘com’ comes from), .org is not used strictly for non-profit purposes anymore. There are no restrictions on what a .org can be used for and I have seen many .org sites selling products or making money from advertising. Keep in mind that .org being strictly non-profit is more image than anything else.

Furthermore, .org is one of the most sold extensions on domain forums. Speaking from personal experience as well, I have sold at least 5 times the number of .org domains that I have sold .net. In fact, I will usually pick a .org before a pick a .net if they are both available. As mentioned in the .net article, .net does not have a real identity. On the other hand, .org definitely does and domainers need to be aware of that.

I could make this a lot longer, but I won’t. Here is my current feeling on hosts — and I’ve tried a number of them. If you want a lot of access and control for the price, I recommend Inmotion Hosting. Not coincidentally, this site is hosted at Inmotion Hosting. Most of my sites are hosted at Inmotion Hosting, and most of my clients are at Inmotion Hosting too, even though I’m not a reseller. What I am is an infamous tightwad. And Inmotion Hosting offers a lot of value for the dollar.

You can get fancier, higher endian packages than Inmotion Hosting. In fact, if I become a millionaire I’ll probably someday move my sites to 1&1, a hosting outfit from Germany that just entered the stateside market. And which is totally top-of-the-line. Sleek. Mercedes-quality.

But at the moment I’m not a millionaire. In fact, I need to be really conscious of overhead. Which means going for value plain and simple, which in my experience means Inmotion Hosting.

What do I like about Inmotion Hosting? They’re actually not for everyone. Those who consider themselves ‘rank beginners’ at webmastering will want a little more hand-holding. Inmotion Hosting isn’t one of those template-driven minisite style hosts that keep you and the back end as far from each other as possible.

No, Inmotion Hosting is more for the kind of person who dreams of having a dedicated Unix server on a really big pipe. The kind who’s comfortable slopping around in Unix, PuTTY, PHP and mySQL but has nowhere near the budget to pull off dedicated hosting. Enter Inmotion Hosting, whose virtual hosting packages are the next best thing. They give you total control.

What do I mean by total control? Well, I mean if you don’t like their standard applications, just install your own. I mean, you can mess with your entire ‘root system’ from the command line or the control panel, whichever you prefer. And if you want to stop and start your Apache or mySQL processes at any time, you just do it. And finally I mean that there’s no grief about giving you secure shell access and everything that goes with it.

Maybe you’ve experienced the other style. Getting ‘real’ access makes pulling teeth look pretty pleasant when it comes to some hosts. (I just now got an email back from one of those hosts. A Host That Shall Remain Unnamed. To wit: “You do not have to promissions [sic] to modify any of the configuration files.”)

Somehow, Inmotion Hosting manages to offer all that client freedom (it sounds like a nightmare from a management perspective when you think about it) and still keep really, really low rates.

Inmotion Hosting has been in business since 1998 and I’ve worked with them for a while, maybe about four years. They’ve had some bumps and growing pains along the way, don’t get me wrong. In the fall of ’93 they migrated to a more sophisticated architecture to serve their wildly expanding customer base and hit some snags during the transition. Inmotion Hosting settled in quickly, got back to their usual excellence, and keeps a verifiable uptime of 99.95%.

Inmotion Hosting customer service is good, too. They don’t ignore you, and they get back to you when they say they will. But to be honest, one of the best things about Inmotion Hosting ‘customer service’ is the tight community that’s grown up in their forums. There are a surprising number of people there who are really willing to help you out. You don’t even have to ask especially smart questions.

And there’s one more thing to keep in mind if you do any serious development. Inmotion Hosting’s special relationship with Miva. Not only does Inmotion Hosting offer Miva in some ridiculously low-priced packages, but if you get a medium-priced ecommerce package you get the Miva compiler and Limited Source Kit.

I can’t bold that enough. If you’ve ever worked with Miva, you know how incredible that is. I don’t think any other hosting company is offering anything comparable. Even if you have nothing to do with Miva (most of my clients don’t), you’ll be making a great choice with Inmotion Hosting.

Check them out. Check out their value packages. I liked them when I started and I still like them four years later because:

Which means you’ll never have that annoying moment where you tell your client (or your business partner, or your wife), “I can’t do that. The hosting company doesn’t offer/allow/understand it.”

Whoops, just got a few more emails back from tech support at Inmotion Hosting, and another hosting company. I was installing a light shopping cart on both hosts and had some questions about adapting it to the server. Let’s see what they say.

Other Hosting Company’s response:

Thank you very much for your mail. You can make a .htacess file but we can not do anything to the http.conf file. We apologize for the inconvenience.

If you’ve ever gotten under the hood of a web site, you know what not being able to “do anything to the http.conf file” means. It means you may as well be hosting with Geocities. Keep in mind that this hosting company charges over $35/month for this package.

Now here’s the reply from Inmotion Hosting:

Do you still have [ShoppingCart] set up on your account so we can take a look at it? If it is still installed then let us know where we can go to take a look at it. Let us know if you have any other questions.

Do you get the sense they actually read my email and wanted to resolve the problem? So do I.

Inmotion Hosting is the next best thing to your own dedicated server on a giant pipe that a telco forgot to bill you for. Until we’re all millionaires, that is. And even then you might find you prefer going with the ‘value package’ after all.